


From this day forward

by fromthedeskoftheraven



Series: Wedding vows [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Implied/Referenced Sex, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6118988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fromthedeskoftheraven/pseuds/fromthedeskoftheraven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin must walk the woman he loves down the aisle at her wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From this day forward

The room was so quiet, you could hear the faint humming of a fly in some distant corner. You stood alone in your ornate robes, having dismissed the gaggle of chattering ladies who were to attend you to the ceremony to wait in the corridor outside your chamber. 

In a matter of moments, you would walk to the Hall of the Kings, where your guests were assembled. Before their watchful eyes you would join hands with your betrothed, speak the vows that would bind you, receive his ring on your finger, sit at his side for the wedding feast. When you lay down tonight, it would be in his bed…in his arms. 

All was prepared for the wedding. There was only one person whose presence was yet required.

A soft knock came at the door, and your heart leapt into your throat. “Come in,” you called, forcing your voice to evenness.

Thorin gingerly opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. You turned to face him, and he silently took in the sight of you in your bridal garb. There was appreciation on his face, a hint of longing, of awe, but also unmistakable regret. He took a breath and seemed to collect himself, meeting your eyes with a bracing smile. “Well,” he said quietly, “you look–”

“Don’t, Thorin. I can’t bear it.”

The smile faded, and his gaze fell to the carpet at his feet. “This is for the best.”

“So you’ve told me.”

“Kili is worthy of your love,” he insisted, “he will cherish you, be faithful to you. He will be by your side for a long, happy lifetime…far removed from the cares of the throne.”

“He will not be you,” you said mournfully, compelling his eyes to meet yours, and the pain in his glance pleased the small, spiteful part of you that wished to see him share in your suffering.

“No. And thus you will not waste your youth mourning at the tomb of your husband, see your son crowned King in his childhood,” he said bitterly.

You flinched, as though he had struck you. “Know this, Thorin: I will be a good wife to him,” you declared. “He deserves that. After today, though heartache slay me, you will be no more to me than my King and my husband’s uncle.”

He stepped closer to you, a spark of indignation in his blue eyes. “Do not imagine that I would ever stoop to dishonoring the marriage bed of another man, much less my own kin,” he vowed. “After today, he is yours and you are his.”

Tears welled in your eyes, blurring your vision. “I am his,” you repeated hopelessly.

Thorin’s face softened with remorse as he slowly reached to graze your cheek with his fingertips, his touch gentle. Your breath caught, shuddering in your throat, strangling your whisper of his name, and with a swift motion his lips were on yours, kissing you desperately. His arms were around you and your fingers buried themselves in his hair, clutching him, willing him not to let go as he tasted the salt of your tears on your lips and clung to you like a drowning man. 

“Thorin,” you begged, with a hoarse sob, “Thorin, please don’t make me do this. I belong with you. With _you_.”

With an effort, he loosed his hold on your body, resting his hands on your waist, pressing his forehead to yours as he heaved deep, steadying breaths, his eyes tightly closed. Your hands clasped his face, frantically, pleadingly stroking his soft beard.

“Amrâlimê,” he rasped helplessly, his hands tensing on your waist.

Abruptly, he wrenched himself away from you and stepped back, leaving you alone to struggle for composure. Trembling to your core, you pressed your clenched fists to your brow bone, painfully hard, until you had staunched the flow of tears and mastered your ragged breathing. You moved as if in a dream to retrieve a handkerchief from your vanity table, carefully drying your cheeks and looking into the mirror to mechanically tuck back a strand of hair that had come loose from your braids. Thorin stood still, stricken, gripping the back of a chair as though it would anchor him in place, and your voice sounded dull and distant as you spoke to him.

“We have to go.”

He came to himself with a sharp intake of breath and stood up straighter, giving you a nod, though his face yet betrayed his inner turmoil. Smoothing his countenance to a mask of determined blankness, he rallied himself to walk to the door, and with a final, haunted look into your eyes, opened it.

The waiting ladies flocked around you in the hallway, falling into their positions, and Thorin wordlessly proffered his arm. You squared your shoulders and placed your hand lightly on Thorin’s arm without meeting his glance, and together you began the long walk to where a crowd – and a husband – waited for the King to present the young Prince with his bride.


	2. To love and to cherish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An arranged marriage blossoms into true love.

Your wedding day had been a blur. After the turbulent scene in your rooms, you remembered only snippets…the momentary tightening of Thorin’s grasp as he took your hand to place it in Kili’s…your husband speaking his marriage vows with a shy, eager nervousness that had wrung your already aching heart…trying to force down food that tasted like sawdust in your mouth amid a whirl of music and dancing and celebration. 

When the festivities had drawn to a close and you were alone together in the candlelit bedroom, Kili had been tender, patient, generous, and you had waited in the darkness for the sound of his faint snores before letting your silent tears flow, thinking of Thorin in his solitary chamber and wondering if he shed tears for you.

It would not be the last time – the gods forgive you – that you would lie beside Kili with Thorin in your heart.

Kili was as kind a husband as any woman could hope for, and if he knew that there was too much of duty and too little of love in your courtesies to him – and the occasional flicker of wistfulness in his eyes, quickly averted from yours, told you that he did – he was not embittered. Indeed, he seemed only to wish to make you happy, and as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, you began to find yourself anticipating his return home at the end of the day, his pleasant conversation at the supper table, and his smiles that seemed to light up the chambers you shared. 

On a winter evening, Kili sat on the settee by the fireplace with his bow in hand while you stood over the copper basin in your small kitchen, washing the supper dishes. As you scrubbed plates with a soapy rag and dipped them into the rinse water, your gaze drifted to where he was engrossed in his task, rubbing the polished wood of the bow with wax and wiping it with a clean cloth until it was pristine and shining. His dark hair fell across his cheek and his tongue was tucked firmly into the corner of his mouth, and you smiled at his boyish concentration. 

Your mind wandered to the forges, at midday, where you had taken his lunch to him as he helped with casting a new set of golden wall sconces to light the Great Hall. When you arrived, he was joking with Fili, drinking from a jug of water and resting from the sweltering work, and your heart gave a small, curious leap when he greeted you, his bare chest sheened with sweat and his smile cheerful as ever. He had cleaned off a space on a bench and invited you to join him, and you’d gladly sat beside him while he ate, pausing often to tell you about his progress and to break off bits of his cake to share with Fili’s small son, who was visiting with his mother and hanging on his adored uncle’s knee.

The scene replayed itself in your mind, warming you with the fondness it evoked, as your thoughts spun a meandering thread. 

After all, you were undeniably fond of Kili, even proud of him, grateful for his unspoiled sweetness. You admired his selflessness and bravery, smiled at his mischievous sense of fun…

You rested in the confidence that he would always care for you, always protect you…

The beauty of his sleeping face, the softness of his lips on your cheek, the sparkle in his eyes when he laughed all came, unbidden, into your musings.

After all, he was such a good man, an honorable man…such a desirable man…

_I love him._

The realization came as a whisper rather than a shout, but it reverberated through your being, as iron shivers beneath the blacksmith’s hammer. Words that had once been cruel echoed in your ears with a glorious certainty.

_“He is yours and you are his.”_

_Yes. And I love him._

You finished your work and carefully dried your hands, your heart suddenly thudding in your chest. After putting the dishes away in their cabinet and neatly hanging the dishtowel to dry, you went to the settee to sit beside Kili, neglecting any thought of a book or needlework to pass the time, content simply to watch him work and to revel in his closeness as never before. He looked up from the bow to give you a wink and a smile, but your expression must have betrayed your inner whirl of emotions, for his glance lingered searchingly.

“Is everything all right?”

You smiled and reached to lay a hand gently on his knee, your voice nearly failing you in the sudden dryness of your mouth. “Yes.”

Moving closer to him, you leaned in to press a slow kiss to his lips…the first kiss born of your own affection and desire, the first kiss free of the guilty sting of obligation. Your hand went to his chest as your mouth moved softly against his, your fingers slipping into the neckline of his tunic to touch his warm skin, savoring the feel of him. When you pulled away to catch your breath, his eyes were wide, wondering.

“What was that for?” 

“Because I love you.”

The words were strange and sweet and freeing, and the change in his expression nearly took your breath away, a hopeful, hesitant elation that brought a new light into his eyes. 

“You’ve never said that to me before,” he said quietly.

“No,” you answered. “Forgive me. It is long overdue.”

He quickly shook his head. “There is nothing to forgive. I never expected–” he dropped his eyes from yours, rolling the bowstring between his fingers. “Our marriage was arranged, I’ve always known you didn’t choose me…not really.”

His admission pained you, laid bare the ugly truth of the price you had both paid for every day you’d wished yourself elsewhere, and you took his face tenderly in your hands, determined that he would never again have cause to doubt you. “Kili, I do choose you, for as long as I live. You are mine and I am yours…and I love you.”

His smile was radiant as he let the bow fall to the floor and gathered you onto his lap, burying his fingers in your hair, capturing your lips in a kiss that hinted at the heat he’d been holding back through these months of polite, tentative coupling.

“Kili,” you whispered against his mouth, wanting nothing more than to consummate this new love, to give yourself to him completely, “make love to me.”

He swept you up in his arms, drawing a giggle from you, and carried you to the bedroom, where you eagerly undressed him, adoring his muscular body with caresses of hands and lips even as he made quick work of freeing you from your layers of gown and petticoats and underclothes. If he was surprised by your newfound passion, he was quick and enthusiastic to respond in kind, aglow with pride and happiness as your body came alive for him, blossoming under his touch, blissfully receiving him. His husky murmurs of “amrâlimê” burned in your ears and his name was on your lips over and over, as the sweetest of songs.

When you lay sated together, your limbs still entangled and his heartbeat drumming a gradually slowing rhythm beneath your ear, he brushed his lips over your forehead and whispered, “I never thought we could be like this.”

Raising your head to rest your chin on his shoulder, gazing into his soulful eyes, you promised, “we will always be like this.”

* * *

Childish laughter floated on the air as you walked down the short hallway, bearing a tray with a plate of little raspberry tarts and two linen napkins.

“That’s the pretty doll Uncle Thorin gave you, isn’t it? She must have the place of honor, next to the princess,” came Kili’s animated voice.

“I the princess, Adad!” a small voice piped up.

“Yes you are, darling. And here’s the wooden horse, where shall he go?”

“Horse sit by Adad.”

“Very well, then, here he sits.”

You entered the nursery to find Kili sitting cross-legged on the thick rug, a miniature teapot and matching cups laid out on a child-sized table in front of him, facing the little girl who had inherited her father’s dark hair and expressive brown eyes.

Lís, your firstborn, conceived of your epiphany of love, had knit you and Kili together more closely still as you’d carried her and welcomed her into the world. Three days after her birth, when Kili had proudly placed his daughter in her great-uncle’s arms, your eyes had met Thorin’s with no pang of sorrow for what might have been, no searching of his face for regret as had once been your habit. The flames of ill-fated passion had burned themselves out, leaving behind only a fond, familial warmth, and you had smiled to see Thorin’s affectionate gaze at the sleeping baby as he carefully cradled her.

“Amad! Sweets!” your daughter cried gleefully upon seeing you, and Kili jumped lightly to his feet to take the tray from you, pressing a kiss first to your lips and then, bending, to the curve of your belly, rounded with your second child.

“Yes, love, here are your sweets, now you can have a proper tea party,” you cooed, leaning to affectionately smooth the little girl’s hair.

Kili placed the tray of tarts on the fireside table and presented one to Lís, who promptly took a large bite, littering the front of her dress with crumbs.

“What do you think, shall we invite Amad to our party?” Kili asked her, with a grin.

“Amad be princess, too?” she asked quizzically, her mouth stained pink with raspberries.

“Oh, no, darling,” Kili said solemnly, putting his arms around you. “ _You_ are my princess, but Amad is my Queen.” 

Lís giggled, and turned her attention to pretending to feed a bite of her tart to the wooden horse.

You smiled, and took Kili’s face in your hands for a sweet kiss, lovingly stroking his stubbled cheek.

“And your father’s heart is the only throne I could ever wish for.”


End file.
